The Ramblings of a Fosgnilbmareht

I use Firefox. I stopped using IE awhile ago after I realized how much better Firefox is. IE7 does a pretty good job most of the time, but Firefox is so much better when you can throw extensions, useful extensions at it.

I am a web developer. I make web sites (<- I never know if that’s one word or two). Part of making web sites is viewing them on as many browsers as possible to make sure everyone gets a consistent experience when viewing the site. Some of the extensions I use help with that.

Now on to the list (it’s not too long) sorted by what I think is most important/useful first:

1. Firebug
   This is probably the best extension out, even if it is buggy at times. If you don’t develop web sites, then you probably don’t use this or would have heard about it. But if you do develop web sites, and you don’t know how to use this, then you need to get in the know. Firebug is the most useful tool in your library. It will greatly improve your quality of life. Thank you to the developer’s of this.
   Now only if it worked in Firefox 3 perfectly…..
2. Foxmarks Bookmark Synchronizer
   Ever since I found this little gem, my surfing is so much easier. Now all of my bookmarks are synced across the 3 and up computers I use (Home, Work, Laptop, Virtual machines). I could use something like del.ic.ous or some other social networking site. Or I could even write my own script that would sync them, but why bother when this handy extension does it for me? I don’t care about sharing my bookmarks with people, and some of them I don’t want to. So this extension is great for me.
3. Google Notebook
   Google Notebook is a pretty useful because it lets me write notes and access them anywhere I have a computer with an Internet connection. With this extension, I can access my notebook even faster. I can just click “Open Notebook” in the lower left hand of my browser and instantly my notebook pops up in the corner. There’s even a right click context item that sends the current page to my notebook for later viewing (it saves a link to the page). I can store code, tips, reminders, any text I want to use later. Saves having to carry around an actual notebook.
4. Web Developer
   I only use a few features of this one, but that’s only because I haven’t played with all the features yet. Every time I try a new one, this extension gets better. It lets me block JavaScript, view the CSS for a page in it’s entirety, provides quick links to validate the page I am on through W3C, and many other tools I am still learning. Combined with Firebug and my web development life is almost a breeze (well not really since I still have to write all the code, but it does make debugging the visuals of a page so much easier).
5. PDF Download
   Not the most used extension, but good nonetheless. No more opening PDFs in the browser and bogging everything down unless I say it can. I normally use it to save the PDF to my computer, which should be the default action but isn’t always. I can also view the PDF as HTML.
6. StumbleUpon
   If Firebug and Web Developer are the tools of my trade, StumbleUpon can be described as the rust on my tools. This extension slows my work down. But maybe in retrospect, it speeds it up too. StumbleUpon will randomly take you to a page others have said are good. You define the categories of sites you would like to browse then hit Stumble and you are on your way. Great way to kill time, but really only if you have the time to kill, which I rarely do. I sometimes spend too much time on sites StumbleUpon sends me too lol.
7. Adblock Plus
   This would have ranked higher except that, once again, I am a web developer. Sometimes its me putting those awful, awful ads on pages. But to give myself a bit of credit, most of the sites I work on don’t have unnecessarily obnoxious ads since they are mostly corporate sites. Some of my personal sites (like this one) will from time to time have Google Ads, but those are plain text ads, not like the ones on Myspace or Facebook. I can’t really use this extension too much because I need to see the ads at time, but when I don’t need to this is great for getting rid of all that junk. If you aren’t a web developer then this should be at the top of your list.
8. Download Statusbar
   This one is only a minor one but a welcome one. It adds a counter to the bottom right of Firefox and lets me know when my downloads are done and how many are still going. Not much more to it than that.
9. Google Send to Phone
   Sometimes its easier to type a text message on my computer. What can I say, I text a lot.
10. Nasa Night Launch
    I’m throwing this one my list of extensions even though it’s a theme (although themes are considered extension in Firefox). This is purely a cosmetic thing. My home computer is Vista and has a nice dark theme going for it so having my browser match is nice. Even when I was running XP, I had the Royale Noir theme (which is pretty close to my current Vista them) so I had this theme too. It even works on my Linux boxes.

Well there’s my top 10 (and consequently the only 10 extension I use). If any of these sounded interesting to you, try them out and let me know your experience with them. If you don’t like them you can always uninstall them. Firefox makes that extremely easy. To get these, go to Firefox’s add on page at https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/